PALMER, GEORGE CANNING PRINCE (1859-1903)

PALMER, GEORGE CANNING PRINCE, Methodist minister, Newcastle circuit, 1902-03; b. Canning parish, Queens Co., N.B., 21 Apr 1859, s/o John Palmer and Eleanor Agnes Marshall; brother of James Marshall Palmer; m. Maude H. Johnston, of Charlottetown; d. Newcastle, 10 Apr 1903.

George C. P. Palmer was a grandson of the farmer-poet, David Palmer, author of New Brunswick and Other Poems (1869). He grew up at Gagetown, where the family resided after his father became high sheriff of Queens County in 1863. He was educated at the grammar school there and attended the Provincial Normal School. He taught for a few years and then entered the ministry on trial in 1887. Ordained in 1890, he served on several Methodist circuits in New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island before he was appointed to the pulpit of St John's Church in Newcastle. He arrived in July 1902 with his three children, his wife, Maude H. Johnston, having died about a year and a half previously. Ten months later he died also, a few days before his forty-fourth birthday. A son, Richard Marshall Palmer, who grew up at Gagetown, was a well-known lawyer in Moncton.